Jong-nam murder: Defence teams submit request for evidence on Mar 31

KUALA LUMPUR: Police shouldn’t make statements without checking facts, lead counsel of Indonesian Siti Aisyah who is accused of murdering Kim Jong-nam, has said.

Counsel Gooi Soon Seng was responding to Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar’s statement, denying to have received the request from the defence lawyers for documents and CCTV recordings for the trial.

“Police cannot make such statements without checking facts, we have proof,” he said.

Gooi, leading a team of five lawyers from Messrs Gooi & Azura told the New Straits Times that their request submitted on March 31, had been acknowledged by the police as well as the deputy public prosecutor.

“I need to reply back, he (IGP) cannot make a statement like this without checking the facts.

“We have requested for the CCTV recordings and we have proof that we have made the request.

“If you read the contents, we specifically stated what we needed including the time, place and date of the recordings,” he clarified.

Gooi also provided the NST with a copy of the documents containing his requests for the names of witnesses and/or suspects who had been interviewed and their statements that had been recorded before being sent back to North Korea, among others.

The defence had also requested to be supplied with a copy of the statements of the four North Korean suspects who may not be made available to the defence during trial.

Yesterday, Khalid in a press conference said no applications were made for either the CCTV footage of the murder, or investigation papers on four North Koreans also implicated in the crime, who are currently, still at large.

“Did they (the defence lawyers) make an official application? It is not the matter of just asking. If they did not make any official application, we won’t prepare any documents and the request must be done via court order,” he said.

During the mention of the case of Siti Aisyah,25, and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, 28, at the Sepang magistrate’s court yesterday, the defence lawyers complained that they have yet to get hold of the materials deemed important to the defence preparation.

On March 1, the two foreign women were jointly charged with murdering North Korean Kim Jong-nam with the assistance of four others, who are still at large, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (klia2) departure hall at 9am on Feb 13.